Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’

“Neil deGrasse Tyson undoubtedly hopes you and your family are having a wonderful holiday season. Nevertheless, a series of tweets sent by the astrophysicist on Christmas have incensed some, as he provocatively questioned both the significance of the holiday — and the reason we celebrate it.

Happy new year!
—
An Oklahoma mother said atheists saved Christmas for her family after she was treated poorly by a church charity.

Tiffany Wait said she and her husband went to Bible Baptist Church’s Toy Shop on Christmas morning to get gifts for their 7-month-old son but were turned away when she declined to hand over the baby for a volunteer to hold.

“I am poor and would not be able to celebrate Christmas this year without their charity,” Wait said. “I went last year and it was a life saver. This year however, I was treated shockingly bad.”

She said she didn’t want to hand over her baby, who doesn’t like strangers, but the volunteer insisted she had to or the family couldn’t participate in the giveaway.

ANCHORAGE – Christians like to say that Jesus is “the reason for the season.”

But a group of atheists say no time of year should be free from “pagan reverie.”

To that end, Anchorage city buses are carrying some very non-traditional Christmas messages. The Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin, has spent decades fighting for the secularization of America.

–After negotiating with elected officials and with help from the ACLU, corruption fighting atheist Chaz Stevens was allowed to install an eight feet tall Festivus pole outside of Deerfield Beach’s main fire station, located on the corner of US1 and Hillsboro Blvd.

Stevens’ Festivis pole is displayed among other holiday exhibits, including a manger and menorah.

Festivus, a secular holiday celebrated on December 23, commemorates the holiday season and avoids wanton commercialism. Festivus became part of worldwide popular culture after being featured on the Seinfeld episode “The Strike” where Frank Costanza noted, “No, instead, there’s a pole. It requires no decoration. I find tinsel distracting … It’s made from aluminum. Very high strength-to-weight ratio.

Atheist magician Penn Jillette questions Christian logic and the so-called War on Christmas: “Why leave me out? Why do that? What’s your motive? And trying to turn around a ‘we want to leave you out,’ into ‘why are you forcing us to not have our joy,’ is insanity. It’s backwards.”